Do you think he will wait and starve in patience as he used? After he has tasted political socialism, after the International, after the Socialist Congresses and the Paris Commune? No, it will not now be as it used to be. They will hurl themselves upon Europe and all the old things will crumble for ever. The waves will be broken by our shore alone, since only then will it be palpably and evidently revealed how greatly different is our national organism from the European. Then, even you, messieurs les doctrinaires, will perhaps bethink yourselves and begin to search in our people for ‘national principles ‘at which you only laugli now.
And now, gentlemen, now you point us to Europe and appeal to us to transplant those very institutions which will crumble there to-morrow, as absurdities which have had their day and in which a great many clever people even there no longer believe, which maintain themselves and exist only by the force of inertia. Who but an abstract doctrinaire could seriously take the comedy of the union of the bourgeoisie, which we see in Europe, as the normal formula of the union of men upon the earth? We are told that they got rid of contradictions long ago — and this after twenty constitutions in less than a century, and after well-nigh a dozen revolutions? Oh, perhaps, it will only be then that we shall be freed for a while from Europe, and ourselves engage, without European tutelage, in the pursuit of our own social ideals which inevitably spring from Christ and personal self-perfection, M. Gradovsky.
You will ask: ‘What social and political ideals of our own can we have to save Europe? ‘Why, social ideals better than the European, stronger than the European, stronger than yours and even — oh, horror — more liberal than yours! Yes, more liberal because they spring directly from the organism of our people and are not a servile and bloodless importation from the West. I cannot of course say-much upon this subject, if only because this paper is already too long.
But in this connection, remember what was the ancient Christian Church and what it aspires to be. It began immediately after the death of Christ, with a handful of people, and instantly, almost in the very first days after the death of Christ, it attempted to discover its ‘civic formula,’ which was wholly based upon the moral expectation of satisfying the spirit by the principles of personal self-perfection. Then arose the Christian communities — Churches; then speedily began to be created a new and hitherto unheard-of nationality, a nationality of universal brotherhood and humanity, in the shape of the catholic oecumenical Church.
But the Church was persecuted, and the ideal grew beneath the earth, and above it, on the face of the earth, an immense building was also being formed, a huge ant-hill, the old Roman empire, which was also the ideal and the outcome of the moral aspirations of the whole ancient world. But the ant-hill did not fortify itself; it was undermined by the Church. Then occurred the collision of the two most opposite ideas that could exist in the world. The Man-God met the God-Man, the Apollo Belvedere met the Christ. A compromise arose: the Empire accepted Christianity, and the Church accepted Roman law and the Roman state.
A small part of the Church went into the desert and began to continue its former work. Christian communities once more appeared, then monasteries; and there were only attempts, attempts that have lasted even unto our day. The large remaining part of the Church was subsequently divided, it is well known, into two halves. In the Western half the State ultimately completely overcame the Church. The Church was destroyed and finally transformed into the State.
The Papacy appeared — the continuation of the ancient Roman Empire in a new incarnation. In the Eastern half the State was subdued and destroyed by the sword of Mahomet, and there remained Christ alone, already separated from the Church. And the State, which had accepted and exalted Christ anew, suffered such terrible and unending sufferings at the hands of its enemies, from the Tartar kingdoms, from disorganisation, from serfdom, from Europe and Europeanism, and endures so much until this day, that a real social formula in the sense of the spirit of love and Christian self-perfection has not yet been evolved in it. You, M. Gradovsky, mercilessly reproach Russia with her disorganisation.
But who was it that hindered her from organising herself well during the whole of the last two centuries and especially during the last fifty years? Just such people as yourself, M. Gradovsky, Russian Europeans who were always with us for the two centuries and now have settled upon us particularly. Who is the enemy of Russia’s organic and independent development upon her own national principles?
Who sneers and will not admit even the existence of those principles and does not even want to see them? Who wanted to remake our people, by fantastically ‘raising them up to himself’ — simply in order to manufacture little Europeans, like themselves, by occasionally breaking off from the mass of the people a single individual and corrupting him into a European, if only by virtue of the revcrs of his uniform?
By that I do not mean that a European is corrupt; I say only that to remake a Russian into a European in the way in which the Liberals do, is often real corruption. Yet in this lies the whole ideal of their programme of activity, in just paring off single individuals from the general mass. What absurdity! Did they really want to tear off and remake in exactly this way all the eighty millions of our people? Do you seriously believe that all our people, as a whole, in its great mass, will consent to become such an impersonality as these gentlemen, these Russian Europeans?
§ 4
TO ONE — HUMBLE THYSELF, AND TO ANOTHER — BE PROUD. A STORM IN A TEA-CUP
Hitherto I have only been debating with you, M. Gradovsky; but now I wish to accuse you for your deliberate distortion of my thought, of the chief point of my ‘Speech.’ You write:
‘There is still too much untruth, the residue of long years of slavery, in our people, for it to demand worship for itself, and to pretend, moreover, to the task of converting all Europe to the true path, as M. Dostoyevsky predicts. . . .
‘A strange phenomenon! The man who punishes pride in the persons of individual wanderers invites a whole people to be proud, because he sees in them a universal apostle. To the one he says, “Humble thyself! “; to the other he says,” Exalt thyself! “‘
And further:
‘Not yet having become a nation, suddenly to dream of a universal role! Is it not too early? M. Dostoyevsky is proud of the fact that we have served Europe for two hundred years. We must confess that the thought of this “ service “ excites no feelings of pleasure in us. Can the time of the Congress of Vienna and the age of Congresses in general be an object of pride to us? Is it by chance the time when we, serving Metternich, suppressed the national movement in Italy and Germany and looked askance even at our co-religionists, the Greeks? What undying hatred we have gained in Europe for that very “ service “!’
First, I will dwell for a moment on this last, almost innocent, little misrepresentation. Did I, when I said that k we had served Europe during the last two hundred years perhaps even more than we served ourselves,’ — did I praise the manner of our service? I only wanted to point to the fact of our service, and the fact is true. But the fact of our service and the manner of our service are two utterly different things. We may have made many political blunders, as the Europeans make them every day, but it was not our blunders which I praised. I only pointed to the fact of our almost always disinterested service. Do you really not understand that these are two different things?
‘M. Dostoyevsky is proud because we served Europe,’ you say. I was not priding myself at all when I said that. I was only pointing out a characteristic of our national spirit, a very significant characteristic. Does it mean that one is proud if he should find an admirable and healthy characteristic in the national spirit? And why do you talk of Metternich and the Congresses? Are you going to give, me instruction in history?
When you were still a student I spoke of our service to Metternich in language much stronger than yours, and for my words concerning our ill-omened service to Metternich (among other words, of course) — I paid, as you know now, thirty years ago. Why did you distort my words? To
